Pick up where you left off on Search

January 9, 2019 at 1:00 PM

While we’ve probably all turned to Google to settle a bet, often we need more than just a quick answer.

You might be looking for information to help you complete a longer-running task, whether it’s meal planning for a new food regimen, researching new stretching routines for post-gym recovery or picking up a new hobby. You might come back to Search to find information on the same topic, hoping to retrace your steps or discover new, related ideas.

To help you with these ongoing search journeys, we’re launching new activity cards to help you pick up where you left off. If you’re logged into your Google account and search for topics and hobbies like cooking, interior design, fashion, skincare and beauty, fitness, photography and more, you may find an activity card at the top of the results page that provides easy ways to continue your exploration.

You’ll find links to pages you’ve visited in the past along with searches you’ve done. From there, you can easily click back to that recipe that you tried and loved, or re-issue a search to discover new facets of that topic.

If you want to mark a page to read or reference later, just touch and hold the link to quickly add items on your activity card to a collection. You can access your collections by tapping the menu on the top left of the Search page (on mobile web), or through the bottom bar of the Google app.

You can control what appears in your activity card by pressing to delete an item or turn off cards by tapping the 3-dot icon. For more options to customize your Search experience, you can access your full history and settings right in Search.

Activity cards will roll out today on mobile web and the Google app in English in the U.S. As you’re looking to build new habits or pick up new tasks in the new year--whether sticking to an exercise regimen, sprucing up your winter wardrobe, or collecting new ideas for your home--we hope this new feature helps you along your way and makes your search history more accessible and useful.